Phalanstery
by RobertaWickham
Summary: Combeferre talks with Enjolras and Feuilly after a particularly trying day at Necker.


Written for EllieKat for the MiserableHolidays exchange.

* * *

Combeferre shivered in the half-mist, half-drizzle. Pulling his coat tighter did no good. The damp felt like it was part of him, not an external threat to be fended off with wool and leather.

The sky was a dull gray, striped with the flesh-pink rays of evening's last light. Combeferre should have been in his own quarters at Necker, but his feet took him to Enjolras's apartment, with little cooperation from his benumbed brain. He took a fiacre part of the way and walked the rest, seeing just enough to avoid bumping into anything or falling, hearing nothing but the indecisive patter of the raindrops on the ground.

When Enjolras opened the door, the candlelight from within burst onto the landing. Combeferre flinched at it, his eyelids fluttering protectively.

He felt Enjolras's hand on his arm. "Are you ill?"

Combeferre laughed. "Me, ill? No. I am well, perfectly well."

"Come in," said Enjolras. Combeferre could hear the frown in his voice. "Feuilly is here," Enjolras added, as he drew Combeferre inside.

Feuilly's brow furrowed when he saw Combeferre. "I must be quite a sorry sight," Combeferre said vaguely, regretting that he had come. "I do apologize. I cannot—"

Enjolras held up a hand to silence him and guided him to a chair.

Combeferre's head fell backwards, his eyes closed, but his body remained taut. His fingers coiled around the edge of the seat, digging into the uncushioned wood. Enjolras was too Spartan for the decadence of a soft seat, let alone tears or uncertainties. He would not disdain Combeferre for wanting one, oh, no, but it would never occur to him to have one on hand, either.

Combeferre's eyes opened. Enjolras and Feuilly were exchanging worried looks over his head, and some part of him resented it weakly, but he could not muster up the words to object. His eyes fell shut again, only to reopen when Enjolras nudged him and proffered a cup of coffee, darker than Combeferre usually took it. "I had only a little milk, and no sugar," Enjolras said, with a touch of chagrin.

The rich smell revived him with an unnerving suddenness. Combeferre realized he was no longer cold or damp. "It is all right," he said to Enjolras, managing a smile. He took a tentative sip, letting the bitterness seep into his tongue.

Enjolras smiled in return, and turned back to Feuilly. Combeferre heard them without following the threads of their conversation—Greece was mentioned, and so were the dey of Algeria and his flywhisk, and somehow these connected, but Combeferre did not trace how. He slumped in his chair, still weary but now relaxed. The chatter sank into him.

After some minutes of it, however, Enjolras returned, like a circling hawk, to his original pursuit. Combeferre's eyes had drooped again, but he felt the warm pressure of a hand on his shoulder, and looked up to see Enjolras's grave face. "Something is wrong, Combeferre, that much was plain when you came in. Now that you've had some rest, would you care to tell us what it is?"

Combeferre felt pinned, caught, inspected. For one moment he was too irritated with Enjolras to even fumble for words. Then the feeling ebbed: perhaps it would be good to speak, better that than to let it curdle. Carefully, he constructed a sentence, and opened his mouth to voice it—but then he caught sight of Feuilly again, sitting there full of earnest concern, and the words fell away. Feuilly, who hardly made three francs a day; Feuilly, who painted fans because he could not feed and clothe himself if he devoted all his hours to the ills he most wished to heal. Feuilly was a living rebuke to Combeferre's selfish complaints. "Never mind, it is nothing," said Combeferre.

"It is not nothing," Feuilly said, sounding as stern as Enjolras ever was. "Do not keep silent on my account. I can leave if you wish to speak to Enjolras privately."

"No," Combeferre hastened to say. "Of course not. It is nothing I wish to keep private from you, it is only…rather petty, I'm afraid."

"I cannot believe that. You look much too haggard." Enjolras was scowling at him now, and somehow that was reassuring. Enjolras's unlined face always sprouted a wrinkle between his brows when he was miffed, and it now appeared in full force; his mouth twisted into what was almost a pout.

"It's work, that's all," Combeferre said, smiling a little in spite of himself. "A particularly harrowing evening."

Enjolras and Feuilly both waited in silence. It was an inconvenient trait they both shared—they would not be fobbed off with unresponsive responses, nor would they rush to fill awkward silences with their own talk, thus providing an opportunity to change the subject. No, they would simply wait, until they received answers that satisfied them.

"I saw a girl," Combeferre said. "No more than thirteen. She died of phthisis."

"I do not wish to be callous," began Feuilly.

Combeferre almost smiled again, and thought: _but you_ will_ be, will you not._

Feuilly caught his expression, and closed his mouth.

Enjolras discerned Combeferre's thoughts as well, and displayed the determined look he always did when he was trying to be tactful. "What was particularly bad about this instance?"

Meaning, what was different from all the other times Combeferre had seen children, or women, or men, die from the world's icy brutality. Undoubtedly that was what Feuilly had been about to ask: _I do not wish to be callous, but what made this girl remarkable?_

And the truth was that nothing did. Oh, something about the jokes she had made reminded Combeferre of his sister, and something about her resolute smile had reminded him of Bossuet, and something about her tears had suggested Prouvaire, while her stoicism at the very end recalled Enjolras. But none of that was particularly remarkable, compared to other patients. Combeferre saw his loved ones in every death. He sometimes felt he should suppress that tendency, but he could not fully convince himself that it merited suppression.

"She was…" Combeferre faltered, then rallied. "She was a girl. She could have been a woman, and now she will never be. It was my duty, my work, to save her—and I couldn't—and so it was my work to watch her die." The words, now that he had unloosed them, were unstoppable. "I do what I do because I must—because I love it—or is that the same thing? I have other choices if my only wish was to avoid starvation. I must work, yes, but it needn't be _this_ work. Fourier writes of a world of attractive labor, a world where people work in groups of friends and no one is ever exhausted by their work, a world where people may live by what they love. That is the ideal, but how can that ever be, so long as there is illness and pain? There will be illness, even in the future. And so long as there is illness and pain, I—there will be people who wish to cure it, so their love will be intertwined with death, as inseparable as night is from day. And what does _that_ say of them?" He broke off. "Forgive me, I am meandering—I do not know what I say."

"You have had a long day," Feuilly said, sounding very kind and very sad, and Combeferre felt a wave of affection for him, despite his own confusion and embarrassment. He had no right, no right at all, to impose his suffering on his friends, who had their own burdens to carry. "A long and sorrowful day. You should rest."

"You are right," Enjolras said. He walked over to the desk and, taking up a candlestick, held it aloft like a banner, and smiled. "That is—Feuilly is right, that you should rest, but you are also right, Combeferre. There will be illness in the future, my friend, but you needn't worry that it will be because nothing has changed. It will be because everything has. Anguish that we see as inevitable today will be deemed illness tomorrow. Future generations won't be as blinkered by pain as we are; they will not take so much waste and misery for granted; they will look at what we assume are cruel necessities to be endured, and see wrongs to be righted, and they will right them."

And how was it that Enjolras, so abstracted, so austere, so faithful to his pitiless love, could so precisely spear the heart of Combeferre's inner discord? Combeferre, wordless, could only nod, and take Feuilly's offered hand to pull himself up. He allowed himself to be led to the bed, and within moments was asleep.


End file.
